1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an inspection mechanism for a chip type circuit element, and more particularly to such an inspection mechanism which is adapted to inspect a chip type circuit element to be mounted on a printed circuit board or check characteristics of the circuit element to prevent any defective chip type circuit element from being mounted on the printed circuit board.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Such a conventional inspection mechanism for a chip type circuit element is constructed in such a manner that checking bars corresponding in number to terminals of a chip type circuit element to be inspected are arranged opposite to one another in order at a position at which the chip type circuit element is to be picked out or extracted from a chip tape. Then, the so-arranged checking bars are actuated to cause tip ends thereof to be abutted against the corresponding terminals of the circuit element and electricity is then flowed through the checking bars to detect propriety of the circuit element depending upon the flowing of electricity through the circuit element.
Unfortunately, in the conventional inspection mechanism described above, the number of such checking bars which must be arranged is varied depending upon the number of terminals of a chip type circuit element to be inspected. More particularly, when a chip type circuit element having two terminals such as a resistor, a capacitor, a coil or the like is to be inspected, the inspection mechanism must be provided with two such checking bars; whereas the inspection of a chip type circuit element having three terminals such as a transistor, a diode or the like requires that the inspection mechanism is provided with three such checking bars. This causes the number of such checking bars which are to be incorpo4rated in the inspection mechanism to be varied depending upon the number of terminals of a chip type circuit element to be inspected, resulting in the inspection mechanism being highly complicated in structure and large-sized.
Also, another inspection procedure has been proposed which is adapted to carry out the inspection of an overall printed circuit board during a final step subsequent to soldering to detect any defective circuit element mounted on the printed circuit board and remove it therefrom, and then manually substitute a non-defective circuit element for the defective one. However, this has a disadvantage of being troublesome sufficiently to deteriorate the productivity.
Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to develop an inspection mechanism for a chip type circuit element which is capable of readily and reliably accomplishing the inspection of such a circuit element with a simple structure.